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For your company in the Nordic region, identifying and appointing the right leadership team is a critical, yet complex challenge. Whether your executive search is aimed at finding a Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Vice President, Sales Director, Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Executive Director, Chief Operating Officer (COO), or Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO), hiring right is crucial.
Since the stakes are high in an executive search, mistakes and poor decisions can have severe consequences. From adversely impacting your company’s reputation and finances to its overall success, a wrong hire can cost you dear.
Despite executive search being a demanding process, you can do it right with some effective strategies. We bring you the top five to help you get more from your next executive search in the Nordic region.
1. Understand the Role and its Requirements
Before you start an executive search, it’s vital to understand the role you are planning to fill. A poorly defined or vague role is likely to lead to an unproductive, scattered, and mismatched executive search.
From the required core competencies, personality traits, qualifications, and experience to the responsibilities and key challenges of the role (say, licensing and regulatory issues), a detailed job description should clearly mention them all.
The needs and priorities of your company should also be reflected in the comprehensive job description. Identifying “must-haves” and differentiating them from “nice-to-haves” is equally important.
For a successful executive search, the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) must be defined clearly. Once you have defined what needs to be achieved, you can develop an assessable framework for optimising strategies, evaluating performance, and delivering outstanding results.
2. Decide on Your Search Strategy
Once you have established your search priorities, it’s time to determine your search strategy. Your customised search strategy should outline how you will source, identify, and verify prospects.
By taking your company’s unique requirements and the ideal candidate profile as your starting point, you need to map out the talent pool across geographies, competitors, industries, and suitable in-house candidates. Market mapping will let you identify suitable target companies and their organisational structures along with key individuals and role profiles.
You can use cutting-edge technologies and results-focused methodologies to source and identify suitable candidates in the Nordic region. From leveraging your professional network and referrals to using job boards, LinkedIn, professional forums, social media, industry-focused advertising, and database searches, make sure to cast your net wide to conduct multichannel searches, thus developing a list of top talent.
Don’t forget to focus on passive candidates. Though these high-performing executives aren’t typically looking for a new role, convincing them to consider the open role at your company could be a game-changer. You should also be open to candidates with transferable skills who don’t have a traditional career path but could be a welcome addition with their out-of-the-box thought patterns.
3. Attract, Persuade, and Evaluate Candidates
A highly personalised approach is necessary to persuade top-tier candidates for executive roles. Since they will often have multiple opportunities and a role in your company is unlikely to be their only option, they won’t stay on the market for long. This makes it crucial to move fast to reach out to potential candidates and understand what they are looking for to avoid losing them to competing offers.
You can reach out to your prospective candidates through LinkedIn InMail or an email with your calendar link to help them schedule a call at their convenience. Remember to make your hiring pitch authentic and compelling while highlighting the key points.
From what makes the position attractive and how it aligns with the career goals and interests of the candidates to career and financial advancement opportunities, your company’s culture, and growth plans, your pitch should convey your enthusiasm for the role and motivate the candidates to act in your favour.
If the role has key challenges or involves something that’s not favourable at the moment, you should mention them as well in your pitch. Once you have attracted and persuaded the candidates you believe are best suited for the role, make sure to assess them thoroughly.
Be it online assessment tools, psychometric testing, or cognitive ability tests, a balanced and in-depth evaluation of skills, strengths and weaknesses, and personality is vital to get useful insights into predictors of job performance.
4. Select the Candidate
Once you have conducted extensive assessments and interviews, it’s time to do a thorough background check on the preferred candidate before a job offer is given. While the compensation on offer should be competitive with industry standards, you need to negotiate strategically on multiple dimensions beyond the salary.
C-suite candidates can be motivated with incentives like stock options, flexible work schedules, long-term incentive plans, or relocation assistance. When you are looking for global talent to come and work for you in the Nordic region, relocation assistance can be especially helpful in motivating potential candidates to take up your offer.
When negotiating compensation, highlighting how the role will offer continuous career development and advancement opportunities is equally vital. After you have presented the job offer and negotiated the compensation package and any additional agreements, it’s time for an effective and thorough onboarding process. To integrate the new executive into the specific role, it’s vital to develop a comprehensive onboarding process, which will facilitate the new hire’s success and long-term retention.
5. Partner with an Executive Search Firm
To execute a comprehensive executive search, you will need to invest significant time and effort. When done right, it will help you find a highly qualified, motivated leader who can drive your company to greater success and impact.
If you feel you need help with your executive search in the Nordic region or would rather like someone else to do the heavy lifting, partnering with a competent executive search firm is the ideal way to move forward.
From providing access to top talent for your Nordic company’s open role to finding and vetting highly skilled candidates with goals and vision aligned to your company’s, an executive search firm can streamline and accelerate your C-suite hiring.
Working with an executive search firm is an investment that will improve the quality of your C-suite hire while saving money and time. When you consider the cost of running job advertisements, organising recruitment campaigns, and conducting thorough candidate screenings in-house, it’s likely to be higher than what you will need to shell out when partnering with an executive search firm.
Final Words
To make your next executive search in the Nordic region successful, make sure you understand the role and its requirements, develop a suitable search strategy, and are able to attract and persuade your ideal candidates. Thorough evaluation of candidates and moving fast to make an offer are equally crucial to avoid losing your desired candidates to competing offers.
If handling the entire process of executive search for your Nordic company seems like a tough job to manage in-house, you can always work with an executive search firm. As your Nordic talent acquisition partner, the professionals on board such a firm will help you find and hire suitable candidates for the C-suite roles.
If you aren’t sure which executive search firm to partner with, let us at InHunt World help you efficiently navigate the executive search process!
This article was written by Sonali